Chinese streaming providers are increasingly hunting for talent among animators in Japan, the land where anime was born but whose own industry has fallen on tough times.
At a small office building in Machida, a residential area outside of downtown Tokyo, several men and women recently were busy drawing what looked like a Shinto shrine gate on tablets using stylus pens. It looks like a typical anime studio in Japan.
But this is Colored Pencil Animation Japan, the local unit of the Chinese studio partly owned by China Literature, a Tencent Holdings group member. Set up in 2018, Colored Pencil Animation Japan has worked on Chinese anime projects including "The King's Avatar" series and other videos.
What sets Colored Pencil apart from other studios in Japan is that the Chinese-owned company hires animators as employees, paying about 175,000 yen ($1,580) a month for those fresh out of school -- above the industry average. It also offers an employee-friendly work environment with a flextime arrangement.
More than half of animators in Japan are freelancers. Just 14% of them work as full-timers, a 2019 survey by the Japanese Animation Creators Association found.
Tencent and other streaming platform giants have raced to bolster their libraries since the purchase of Japanese anime was discouraged in 2018 under Beijing's foreign online content restrictions. As they now seek to produce high-quality anime domestically, Colored Pencil's Chinese parent offers competitive pay and benefits to capture talented artists in Japan.
"More Chinese companies will follow suit," predicted Daisuke Iijima, an anime industry researcher at Teikoku Databank.
Chinese players are not the only ones coveting Japan's anime talent. U.S. heavyweight Netflix signed a comprehensive multiyear tie-up with Tokyo-based Production I.G. in 2018 to create original works.
